Many surgical procedures are complex procedures requiring numerous alignment jigs and intricate soft tissue procedures. Preparing and placing the alignment jigs and other preparation is often a significant part of the procedure and involves various errors. For instance, when performing a total knee replacement procedure (“TKR”), the prosthesis must be accurately implanted to ensure that the joint surfaces are properly aligned. If the alignment is inaccurate, the misalignment can compromise the function and eventually lead to failure of the joint, requiring the complex task of replacing one or more portions of the knee prosthesis.
To ensure that the prosthesis is accurately implanted, during a TKR procedure, the surgeon uses a variety of jigs to guide the cutting of the femur, the tibia and sometimes the patella. The jigs are complex and expensive devices that require significant time and skill to locate and attach on the patient during the surgical procedure.
The advent of computer assisted surgery (CAS) provides the promise of simplifying many of the complexities of surgical procedures. To date systems have been developed that utilize separate room based tracking systems designed to monitor the cutting jigs, tools and the patient. In some instances, the computer may be used to guide the surgeon during the process. The placement of the in room camera closer to the tool has been proposed. However, improvements are needed to address the challenges of the line of sight requirements and other real-time and dynamic environment of a surgical procedure.
Although computer assisted surgery holds promise, there are numerous aspects to be addressed to make a system commercially viable and useful to surgeons. There continues to exist numerous aspects of computer assisted surgery that require improvement to improve the efficiency and/or quality of the procedure for processing of CAS data, and more useful outputs to the user.